Us West Protests Competition
US West Inc. has asked a federal court to overturn major portions of the rules opening local telephone monopolies to competition, complaining they put local servers at a disadvantage.
“We think Congress intended to make sure owners of local networks don’t have a competitive advantage,” said Lois Leach, US West spokesperson. “But the (Federal Communications Commission) went far beyond that and made it a distinct disadvantage.”
In a U.S. Circuit Court appeal filed in Washington, D.C., US West claimed the FCC exceeded its authority by interfering with state regulators’ powers.
US West and other phone companies have complained the rules - approved Aug. 1 to guide implementation of the Telecommunications Act - force them to sell wholesale service and the use of their networks to competitors at unreasonably low rates.
The appeal also claimed the rules unconstitutionally prevented US West from recovering its past costs of building the local phone network, by excluding those costs from its wholesale rate calculations. GTE Corp., the nation’s biggest local phone company, and Southern New England Telecommunications Corp. plan to seek a federal court order delaying the rules.
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